A Different Set of Standards

Don’t we all love a story where, in spite of the odds stacked against him, the underdog manages to beat the villain after all? Regardless of society’s postmodernist expectations of unresolved endings, and increasingly blurred moral boundaries, we find the clear-cut good-defeats-bad conclusions oddly satisfying. The ending to Captain America, the latest superhero movie produced by Marvel Studios, is satisfyingly and unapologetically old-fashioned.

The eponymous Captain America starts off as the spindly ‘90-pound asthmatic’ Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), who is so eager to fight for his country in the Second World War that, after being rejected in five different states, he goes to New York to try to enlist under a false name. This is where Dr Erskine (Stanley Tucci) recruits him for the government’s secret Super Soldier programme, which aims to increase the efficiency of the army by injecting soldiers with a newfangled cell-enhancing serum. Erskine sees something in Rogers that no one else seems to appreciate. He sees the character and courage beneath the skinny exterior; he sees the heart of the man, and that is what he bases his selection upon. There is a comically touching scene where, in boot camp, Rogers throws himself on a dummy grenade to protect his fellow soldiers, who have dived for cover. When Rogers is chosen as the first soldier to be tested with the serum, he has just one question: ‘Why me?’ Erskine replies, ‘A weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.’
The world lauds and rewards achievement and ability. While encouraging self-promotion and competitiveness, it often undervalues strength of character and personality. And though in many situations in real life we are quite likely to find ourselves responding in the way the world does, in the dark of a movie theatre we let our guard down and empathise with the underdog. Maybe it’s because we all are painfully aware of our own weaknesses and know the lengths we go to to hide them from the condemning eyes of the world. We’re afraid that our weaknesses might expose us to ridicule or abuse.

While Steve Rogers’s story is fictional, its theme isn’t original. Turning back the pages of history we find David, a scrawny little shepherd boy who went from tending sheep to ruling a nation. This change in circumstances came about, not because of his appearance or his abilities, but because, according to the Bible, God evaluated him for the position by looking at his heart. God sent a man called Samuel to select one of the eight sons of Jesse to be king. Samuel’s first inclination was to choose the eldest and handsomest of the lot, but God clearly didn’t agree:

The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)

Following God’s instructions, Samuel sidestepped all of the seven older sons before settling on the youngest, and the most unlikely, David.

Throughout the Bible, God seems to favour what the world would consider to be the unlikely and the unlovely. Even for his own son’s genealogy God chose several people of low rank and no status. Jesus’s ancestry includes those with a rather colourful past – a prostitute and an adulterer amongst others; people who had a past they weren’t particularly proud of, who were aware of their shortcomings, but who realised their dependence on God. Apparently God is in the business of uplifting the weak, and has been in it since the beginning of time. According to the Bible,

God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world; things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. (1 Corinthians 1:27–28)

Our abilities or inabilities are not a hindrance to God’s love or his purposes for us. His love is not based on what we can or cannot do; he loves us with an unchanging and unchangeable love, and his love can transform us.

Steve Rogers is transformed from lanky lad to muscle man only because of the work of the serum in him. He realised that without the serum his strength didn’t amount to much and so he chose to have it injected into him. The one thing that can transform us as radically is God’s love which he offers to us, but which we need to choose to accept.

The greatest way God showed his love for us was by sending his own son Jesus to take the punishment we deserve for rebelling against God. Grace is the undeserved love and forgiveness God offers us through Jesus Christ. We can choose to accept Jesus’s sacrifice and be forgiven, and when we do we can enter into a relationship with God, who says, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Corinthians 12:9, NIV).

If our weakness makes us realise our dependence on God, then it is a good thing. Then, whatever the world’s take on weakness may be, we can live in the knowledge that we are loved completely and wholly as we are, and that, despite our weaknesses, God can use our lives for great things.